Paris, December 17, 1864. Le Tout Paris has gathered at the Théâtre des Variétés to see the premiere of Jacques Offenbach’s latest opéra-bouffe: The Beautiful Helen. The Austrian ambassador is sitting in a box with his wife – and is outraged.
“My dear, we were wrong to be present at this premiere. Our name will be in all the papers and it is not pleasant for a woman to have been in a play like this, in a way, officially.”
Offenbach’s calculations and those of his librettists Meilhac and Halévy paid off. Everyone in the audience understands who and what the satire is aimed at: the goofy Spartan king Ménélas is Napoléon III, his frivolous, affected-bored wife Helena is Empress Eugénie. The clergy – exposed in the figure of Grand Augur Calchas – is corrupt and depraved to the core. The court mingled with the demimonde: Prince Paris is a superficial dandy, Agamemnon’s son Orestes – a trouser role – hangs around with cocottes and in cabarets at state expense.
They all care regarding one thing: “Il faut bien que l’on s’amuse”, you have to have fun!
Parody of the Second Empire in the form of a parody of antiquity
It’s a dance on a volcano: In the end, the Trojan War will be just as unavoidable as that of 1870/71 between France and Prussia.
Six years following Orpheus in the underworld Offenbach delivers the next satire on the Second Empire with “Beautiful Helena”, once more in the form of a parody of antiquity. And best of all: It is precisely those who are meant who have the best fun, as the composer Camille Saint-Saëns states in bewilderment:
“With La Belle Hélène, the operetta craze and the decline of good taste set in, and Paris finally went insane. The most respectable ladies tried to outdo each other by singing ‘Amour divin, ardente flamme’.”
So became The Beautiful Helen – in spite of all its critics – a worldwide success that continues to this day, not only in Paris: Max Reinhardt staged it in Munich, Karl Kraus celebrated the “Offenbachiade” in his Wiener Fackel, Egon Friedell, Werner Finck and Peter Hacks edited the libretto for the German stage. The work’s sparkling vitality is by no means solely due to the pointed wit of the text: Offenbach’s music, with its ingenious balance between glaring irony and lyrical reverie, is a masterpiece that has remained valid for all time.
